I have been doing a little research on how many basic movie/book plots there are and have come up with a wide variety of answers. 7, 10, 30 and 36 general plot lines have been mentioned in articles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thi...tic_Situations
The plays of Shakespeare for instance have various but often very similiar plots with respect to what genre they are in-- tragedy, history, comedy, romance, etc.
Any English majors out there want to pitch in on this??